The guys who wrote Superman were incredibly racist. The comic they wrote before Superman, Slam Bradley, featured a non superpowered hero that lived to beat up "chinks" who were drawn as weasely caricatures.

An illegal immigrant, to boot. (I'm not big enough of a superhero nerd to look up whether he ever received proper citizenship in the current canon. Not that it matters that much, surely he committed his first heroics that put him on the map without one.)

Check out Michael Chabon's _The Amazing Adventures ofKavalier and Clay_http://www.amazon.com/Amazing-Adventures-Kavalier-bonus-content/dp/0812983580/for a taste of the milieu that gave birth to Superman.

> I'm not big enough of a superhero nerd to look up whether he> ever received proper citizenship in the current canon.

I lost touch with the "canon" after the "Silver Age" (the 60s),but presumably the Kents faked enough documentation (a birthcertificate, say) for the "secret identity" Clark to bea solid (if technically illegal, if the facts were known)citizen.

As for the Superman persona himself -- he didn't "live" anywhere; hisFortress of Solitude was in the unreachable wilds of theArctic somewhere -- presumably he could have moved thatto the bottom of the Pacific Ocean or to the moon, ifnecessary. As he only showed up during crises to save people, itwould have been rather petty for the immigration authorities(at least in those innocent days) to complain that he didn't havea proper passport; **these** days, of course, it would be awhole different story. ;-> (There'd be no end of troubleabout his violating U.S. air-space too -- peculiar, cometo think, that issue never came up AFAIK during the era ofDr. Strangelove and NORAD and the rest. Too politically sensitivean issue for a 60s comic book, I guess, and unpopular to spring on an alreadydecades-old hero. Comic books had to tread very lightlyin the 50s and 60s anyway -- there were shrinks, and even congresspeople,who were decrying them as corrupters of youth.) I always assumed(and maybe the writers took for granted) that Superman was knownto be a "good guy" by anybody who was also a "good guy" --the mayor of Metropolis, the President of the U.S., whoever.Maybe not the Russians or the Chinese, but they weren't"good guys". ;->

I guess the Christopher Meloni character worries about such thingsin the new movie? (which I haven't seen).

Perhaps a more "realistic" (!) approach would have the Departmentof Defense working closely with Lex Luthor to design a greenkryptonite doomsday weapon for Superman, "just in case".